


you would like it on the moon

by gisho



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Autistic Character, Monsters in love, we have always lived in the safehouse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-02
Updated: 2020-04-02
Packaged: 2021-03-01 05:13:37
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,529
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23439754
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gisho/pseuds/gisho
Summary: Martin doesn't want the world to intrude on them. John can't bear the thought of strangers. But Daisy's cottage feels as distant as the moon, and maybe they can make it into home.(Or: a safehouse fic by way of the other famous horror character who was an M. K. Blackwood.)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 35





	you would like it on the moon

\--

His name is Martin Blackwood. He is walking into the village with an empty rucksack, to buy groceries, phone Basira, and get another blanket if he can, because one of the ones they had found was lacey with moth-holes. 

It's important to know those things. He has an identity with boundaries, and a goal. The world is quiet here, soft grey clouds billowing over the sky but never descending enough to resemble a fogbank. Dull green-and-grey hills, slashed with hard-edged patches of trees, the blurred bulk of a peak for which he's sure John would know the name, but Martin doesn't and he doesn't want to ask. John seems stable enough, right now, that Martin can't bear to offer him the least temptation. That means no questions except personal ones. The village is a handful of houses perched in the deeper green of a valley too broad to be a glen, and the loch is a dun stretch of glass which he knows is one hundred eighty-six feet deep because he slipped up and asked when they drove past. It's a harmless thing to know. Water that deep would stand no chance of killing someone before they hit bottom; if he took a boat to the deepest spot and jumped in he would feel every agonizing breath of water until his body sunk into the peaty muck at the bottom.

Or, Martin reminds himself, he might float.

The village has a red phone box and a train station and a little café shop - The Best Coffee In The Highlands!, its sandwich board says - but no grocery store. Martin goes into the café and buys the remains of the bakery case and a paper cup of coffee from a tired blonde woman already looking at her watch.

The coffee is burnt. It takes three tries to dial Basira's number, as hard as his hands are shaking. The sun is going down already. They slept badly in the car last night, pulled over behind a hedge a mile from King's Meaburn, and were on the road again before the late northern dawn. The night before they'd had a proper bed. It was in the house of Elizabeth Fortescue and Olga Bannock, on holiday in Portugal with their three-year-old son and not expected back for a week, whose door key lived under the ceramic frog planter and whose alarm code was 1-5-1-2, their anniversary. John had said all this in a quiet, shaky voice as he let them in, as Basira asked if they were friends of his in the quiet sort of way that meant she knew the answer was no. 

It was Basira who pointed out what they should have thought of, in that same quiet sort of way, while John made tea with a stranger's dented kettle and Martin sat on a stranger's knubbly grey sofa and tried not to have a nervous breakdown. They couldn't rely on John knowing things. John should save his strength. They didn't know how hard Elias was looking for them, on top of the police having questions - her lips had curled into a sneer then, and even from the next room Martin had seen the way John's shoulders rose, like a terrified housecat - and -

She didn't finish her sentence. She drank tea with them, ate the leftover curry that had been left in the fridge to slowly die, and went to sleep on the sofa. Martin and John slept in Olga and Elizabeth's bed, surrounded by photographs of a happy family and sentimental tchotchkes and wooden lamps that someone real had picked out because she liked them, she must have. It was a house full of love and it felt more alien and unreal to Martin for it, as unreachable as closed city in Siberia and fake as the stock photos picture frames came with. He slept like the dead.

Basira says the Institute is still closed off, they don't know when the police will be done with it. Martin ignores the sick churning in his guts and tells Basira to send everyone - who's left, he doesn't say, between the hunters and the Not-Them he doesn't want to know the casualty count - a message from his email giving them - "As much leave as they want," he whispers, hoping he can get away with that. He was the one signing checks and personnel forms for a year. "A year's sabbatical, if they want. Two. Maybe if they all stay away - It has to be worth trying." 

Outside the old-fashioned red phone booth the sky is turning gold on the very edge, sunset making it through the clouds. Basira agrees it's worth trying. She doesn't ask for Martin's password. 

When he gets back it's too dark to see the smoke from the stone chimney, but it must be there, because John has lit a fire. The bedroom is glowing orange. "Sorry," Martin says. "All they had were sausage rolls and pastries. I think everyone who lives here shops in Inverness."

"Of course." John rolls his eyes. "Heaven forbid things be _easy_. Well, I did find a box of tinned soups in the back of the cupboard, so you needn't risk a train ride yet. Assuming you like minestrone. Er. Do you like minestrone?"

It was said softly enough he could have resisted or lied, but it's a harmless question, which is likely why John allowed himself to ask. "I'm fine with it? How about you?"

"Don't know. Never tried it."

"We'll have some now, then, assuming it's still good, I mean, not that tinned soups go bad I suppose ... " Martin trails off. It shouldn't be so awkward to talk about these little domestic things. They managed on the way north, John's hands tight on the steering wheel and eyes fixed on the road, while Martin clutched at his knees and looked at John's hands. "I suppose even I can't ruin tinned soup. I'm not much of a cook."

"Well, that makes two of us." John is levering himself up from the bed, moving like his bones hurt. He accepts the hand up Martin offers with a mutter of thanks and starts to shuffle across the floor to the inexplicable six steps down to the kitchen. 

The best-before date on the soup was last year. "As long as it's Good Enough," John mutters, and proceeds to light the stove. 

He uses the lighter out of his own pocket, which is a zippo, and hisses when his fingers get caught in the first burst of flame. Martin rises from his seat, almost shoving the sausage rolls onto the floor, and wouldn't that be a wonderful end to the day? "Are you -"

"Oh." There's something like a shock of realization in John's eyes. "I'll be fine, see?" He holds up his hand to demonstrate. The old finger-shaped burn scars are still there but the rest is the same soft brown it's always been, no red, no blisters. 

Martin wilts a little. "Don't do that," he mumbles. "I'll - I'll just get a piece of kindling for next time."

"It's no trouble -"

"I'm not going to watch you hurt yourself for no reason, John." 

John doesn't answer at first, just turns away and starts opening the soup cans. He's dumped the second one into the pot with a wobbly handle but no suspicious stains, which were probably just baked-on remnants of beef but which neither of them had really wanted to investigate further, before he speaks again, without turning to meet Martin's eyes. "It doesn't bother me, really," he says, and settles the pot onto the stove. "I - have a high pain tolerance. I wouldn't even have noticed that except I wasn't expecting it."

"Is that an - archivist thing? Like the healing?" Martin forces his fists to unclench. He still doesn't want to watch John getting hurt, but he supposes there's a brutal logic to it, ignoring what doesn't matter.

John shakes his head. "I've always been like that. It used to annoy my grandmother no end. _Boy, how can you just not notice you broke a bone and then refuse to drink milk because it's five degrees too cold?_ " Martin doesn't quite recognize the accent on the quote. "Not that she didn't have enough reasons to be annoyed with me, I suppose, I was such a picky eater. Lived on yoghurt and jam sandwiches. With the crusts cut off." 

"Really?" Martin can't help but grin. "I've seen you eat _vindaloo_."

"Yes, well, my grandmother never cooked vindaloo. She grew up during rationing and I think it left something of a mark."

What about your parents, Martin thinks, but then at least one nasty idea presents itself and he decides to save that line of questioning until they're safely in bed. "At least you weren't obsessed with chips," he offers. "I kept getting lectures about wasting my pocket-money and how I was going to die of cholesterol poisoning."

"And here we are having sausage rolls for tea and chocolate donuts for breakfast. Well. You are, and I'm probably just having tea."

"Which is bad for you. But you must know that."

"Mmm. Least of my worries now, I think."

He shouldn't have said anything. "Speaking of which I should get some water," he blurts out, and grabs the kettle before John can protest.

He didn't think to bring a torch. He has to blink in the cloud-muffled moonlight for most of a minute before it feels safe to shuffle over toward the water pump, triangulating by the twisted shadow of the - oak tree? He should know what it is. The way its waving bare limbs look like a spider makes him smile, a little. There are worse things in the world than darkness.

They have one of those stupid little arguments about who'll take the side of the bed further from the wall, John protesting that he may as well be the one to get out of bed to feed the fire since he's not going to sleep through the night anyway and Martin proposing that maybe John would if he had the safe spot with his back to the wall, but halfheartedly. Finally John rolls his eyes and starts yanking on the end of the bed, and Martin gets his drift and helps him turn it so the head is up against the wall, even if that means neither of them get the safe spot with their backs to the wall. Or anywhere to put their glasses, it occurs to him, and when he says it John blinks a few times and then starts to laugh. It's a funny-sounding laugh, like it's being dragged out of his lungs. He's still laughing as they climb under the blankets, set their glasses on the floor, and press together because it's not a very big bed and it's still cold at the feet. Hot-water bottle, Martin adds to his mental list. Hot-water-bottle, duvet, one of those stove lighters with a stalk, some kind of keg they can fill up once and not have to keep going out to the pump for water. Maybe a deck of cards. Daisy apparently didn't play solitaire. 

He's still thinking of Daisy when the nightmare starts. He thinks of Daisy roaming the halls of the Institute, fingers arching into claws and mouth already impossibly red. Not really Daisy anymore, not stretched out like that. Her scream is distorted and flickers in and out of static like a radio station just out of range. The thing-that-is-not-Daisy blurs through the door of John's old office, then out the other door into the library, where Hannah and Rosie are sitting, talking in animated peas-and-carrots wordlessness over a stack of books with spines all covered in eyes. 

Hannah's hand rises to her mouth and she starts to scream, and Martin tries to rush forward, pull the not-Daisy back or at least attract its attention, give them a chance to escape, but he's gone from invisible to intangible, hands slipping right through its shoulders and coming away covered in sticky black goo. It sinks its teeth into Hannah's neck. 

It's not a wolf either. Rosie crosses her arms and shakes her head. Her eyes are a green they never were in waking life. "Useless," she says. "We all died and you weren't even there."

No you didn't, Martin wants to say, but no words come out. It would be a lie anyway. He doesn't know what happened to the rest of the Institute, the people he used to go to lunch with and know what they wanted for Christmas and who he's barely spoken to, for months, who he let drift away. 

Rosie calmly pulls a letter opener from her pocket and dives into the fray. 

There's a ringing in his ears and a hand on his wrist and John's voice saying, "Martin. Martin. _Wake up._ " It's an unmistakeable command and he wakes up, gasping.

Hannah _quit_ , she moved back to Leeds after she had the baby and - 

"John," he manages, voice raw. The room is still glowing orange with the dying fire and his sweat is already drying because it's still not properly warm in here with the covers kicked off. This is a bad idea but he has to know. "Tell me where Hannah and Rosie are. Tell me if they're alright."

A moment's silence, and the Archivist answers, "Hannah Whitson is in her house in Leeds, in her recliner trying to rock her daughter to sleep. She has a mild cold. Rosalind Moore is at the Prince of Wales pub in Brixton, talking to Basira Hussein. She has a sprain sustained while dragging Rick Handell, from the research department, to safety, but it's healing." A deep breath. John goes on, "I don't think there's going to be much of an Institute left. I think they're all going to take that sabbatical and run. That was a good idea you had, giving everybody leave."

"If I could," Martin agrees. It's easier to think of cold practicalities right now. "Sorry, I shouldn't have - "

"If he'd going to find us he's going to find us whether I See things or not." John's looking down at him and his eyes are glowing, a soft yellow-green like the glow-in-the-dark star stickers Martin had on his bedroom ceiling when he was seven.

"Still. I shouldn't have asked."

"And I shouldn't have answered." John brushes a tear from the corner of Martin's eye with his little finger. "Will you be alright by yourself for a minute? The fire's almost dead."

They sleep so fitfully they don't manage to get out of bed until full sunlight is stabbing through the window. The days are short, and getting shorter. Martin tries to tell himself it doesn't matter. They won't be here through the depths of winter, when the short days and low sun won't knock the chill from their little stone cottage in its west-facing hollow in the earth. Something will have changed by then.

He's not sure how long they have until the firewood runs out. He's reasonably certain water pumps don't run out, but he wonders if they freeze. Martin tells himself to think about it later, and lights the stove to make tea with the very end of a piece of kindling he stuck in the bedroom fireplace. How long is the gas for the stove going to last? Are there backup tanks somewhere? He's used to living in the kind of flats where everything is electric. 

"There's a pothook over the fireplace," John points out, blearily blinking at the tea that was all he'd wanted for breakfast. "We'll manage." 

Martin can't help but chuckle. "You're not usually so optimistic."

"Well, figuring out how to cook with no stove is - simpler than most of our problems."

"Not really." The chocolate donuts are already going stale, and Martin takes a halfhearted bite and wipes the frosting from his lips. "It's easier, but everything else - we can't do anything. I mean, if we want to eat something that's not soup I can walk down to the village tomorrow and get a train back to Aberdeen and buy enough to last us a month, in cash, and I can fade away enough not to have to buy a train ticket and no one will remember me," he knows that's true, he stole the car that way, and this probably counts as babbling, "and that's a lot of steps but none of them probably involve me dying? But hunters showing up would be very simple because we couldn't do a damn thing."

He's breathing hard, and John's hand, the one without the scars, is curled over Martin's like a spider, not quite tightening. "You could," he says. "You could take us somewhere they couldn't follow.

Maybe. Maybe. It hurts to think about. It hurts to hope.

Martin offers, eyes still fixed on the table, "It's a nice day. We should take a walk after breakfast." It's a lie, the sky is still leaden-grey, but the worst they'll get is wet and right now the stone cottage feels like a prison. Raincoats, Martin thinks hysterically, get raincoats. He hopes their cash will stretch. 

"I - probably shouldn't talk to people," John tells his teamug. "In case. I'm not hungry now but -"

"In the hills. I bet we don't see anything but cows and sheep."

John's smile is strained and doesn't reach his eyes, but at least he's pretending. "Coos. They call them hairy coos here."

There's a low peak off to the northeast. They set off in their hoodies and trainers as if the sky weren't threatening to drown them, as if they weren't going to slip in the mud and break their bones. 

"Nice day," John mutters. "At least the afternoon will all be downhill."

"I don't think it's going to take that long, is it? It didn't look that far off."

"No, but we didn't get an early start and I don't know about you, but I haven't climbed anything more - that wasn't stairs in a long time." John walks with his shoulders habitually hunched, hands in his pockets and his eyes on the distance. His hair is already slipping out of its elastic. The elastic is an incongruous lime green, the sort of colour that doesn't go with any of John's clothes or his personality and likely means he picked it up after someone else lost it. 

"Me neither," Martin admits. "I mean, never, really. Never had - " money for the boots, a car to take to the trailhead, weekends to himself - "time. And once I moved to London it was more interesting to go sightseeing from busses."

"You did that too?" There's a bright edge of curiosity in John's voice, a tone that used to be familiar. 

Martin chuckles. "Yeah. It was cheap, and if I got a good spot on top a double-decker I could see into windows? Is that a weird thing to like?" John makes a noise that might almost be a laugh. "Getting little glimpses of people's lives. Maybe that couple is all dressed up because it's their anniversary. Maybe that little boy is staring out the window because he just moved here and he's not used to double-decker busses yet. Maybe that old lady with the vacuum cleaner is about to find the vital clue and solve her boss's murder. Well. Probably not that last one."

"You have a better imagination than me. I just admired the architecture."

"Well, now you can admire the geography."

They make their plodding way up the bulge of the hill, until the cottage vanishes into its fold in the earth behind them, and they have to turn east to skirt the hillock Martin is starting to think would have been a more sensible destination.

There's another speck of lime green off in the distance. Some hillwalker's rainjacket, maybe. Martin can tell when John spots it, because his shoulders hunch up and then he grabs Martin's hand and tugs him downhill, where the scrubby bushes will keep them hidden.

John is breathing harder than the little walk can account for. Martin wraps his fingers around the too-knobbly wrist and feels his fluttering pulse. 

"I can't talk to anyone," John whispers. "I can't risk it."

It makes Martin want to laugh, because wasn't he meant to be the isolated one? And that figure must be a mile away. But at the same time it makes something glow in the back of his mind to think that he doesn't count as _anyone_ in any dangerous way. John can still talk to him. 

They wait, half-hidden, until the bright spot vanishes again and they can wend their way across the marshy ground in peace.

He was wrong about it being all uphill; the ground dips, and a few minutes later they're in a depression that's almost a bog. Their feet squelch. John's face twists in distaste. "We'll have to dry our shoes tonight," he whispers. 

"Yeah." Martin winces. "Maybe we should have brought spares."

"There wasn't exactly an opportunity to go home and pack." John is looking aside, staring deep into the nearest puddle. "I'm sorry I dragged you into this."

He could say something reassuring about how it isn't exactly John's fault, that Martin made the stupidest decisions all on his own, but he's not sure it would get through. He settles for squeezing John's hand. "At least we're together."

They squelch across the boggy patch with their hands still clasped. The light filtering through the clouds is too diffuse to tell time by shadows, but it must be past eleven by now. Martin's hand goes to his pocket before he remembers that his phone is tucked in the bottom of his messenger bag, turned off since they left London, and the bag is under the bed back at the cottage, an hour's walk away. The only thing in his pocket is the doorkey.

It's been years, now, since he spent a timeless two weeks trapped in his flat. The light was the same, grey and endless, creeping across his floor without edges. It took only a few days before the creeping terror of whatever might be waiting when he opened the front door gave way to a wistful, miserable hope that it would come crashing through, that something would happen to break up the endless anticipation. He fidgeted and read every book he had and tried to remember how many ready-meals were left in the freezer without opening it to let the cold out, and when night fell he wrapped himself up in his duvet and counted his breaths until he fell into a drawn sleep that left him feeling no better in the morning.

This isn't quite the same, but Martin can feel the echoes. Whatever little rest they're getting here will be broken soon enough, he's sure, and the dread of it makes his breath catch to think about.

At least he has John. Clichés, he reminds himself, keep turning up because they're true.

They clamber through a wire fence. It snags at their clothes. A quarter-mile away a herd of cows browse, ignoring them completely. John gazes at the movement for a long moment, but apparently satisfies himself no hillwalkers are hidden in the herd, and takes off uphill again. His shoulders are shaking under his hoodie, hunched up like hidden wings.

"You okay?" Martin asks.

"Just need to get my second wind." It's obvious now he's winded. "I haven't been keeping up with my exercise."

Neither has Martin, and he's sweating under the hoodie. He grabs John's wrist to keep him from rushing ahead regardless. They keep going.

It's noon, it has to be, and the bog is dropping behind them and the peak ahead seems no closer for all that they're almost slipping back downhill with each step. Sweat is running down Martin's face and his socks are soaked through, his trouser cuffs stained with mud. John is clutching at his side, taking deep, hissing gasps. With every exhale he's breathing out something that sounds like words just on the edge of hearing. Martin tries to catch it, over his own hard breathing and the noise of their feet on the grass. 

"-twelve," he can just hear. Inhale. "Two hundred thirteen." Inhale. "Two hundred fourteen." Inhale. "Two hun-"

He should have been watching his feet, not listening to John's breath, because his feet go down and sideways and the rest of his body goes hard onto the grass.

There's a noise too controlled to be a shriek, and then John's face is hovering over him, hand on his shoulder. There are random brown splotches over it and the sky, unfocused, which must be mud splatters on Martin's glasses. "Martin? Martin, _are you alright?_ "

"Not sure," bursts out of him before he can think to resist. He hesitates. Tries wiggling his feet, out of a distant memory that's what you should do when you fall over. "I think I might have turned my ankle?"

"Fuck," John says with some feeling. And then, "I don't think I can carry you."

"Yeah. Maybe I can hobble if I put an arm over your shoulders?" He takes a deep breath, which doesn't result in any stabbing pains on his ribs. "Just let me lie here a little bit first?"

John lets out a long breath and settles onto the ground beside him. It distantly occurs to Martin that now both their trousers will be soaked. 

"Maybe we shouldn't have tried climbing a mountain in trainers," he offers. 

"Well, we didn't have any cards to play gin rummy with." John squeezes his shoulder. "We can take a duvet day tomorrow. Tell each other embarrassing childhood stories. How's that?"

"Sounds like a wonderful idea. What's gin rummy?"

"You've - I'm surprised you've never played." He's back to being careful again. Martin wonders if he should tell John not to bother, Martin doesn't want to keep secrets from him, or if the risk that after whatever catastrophe catches up with them John will have to talk to ordinary humans again is too much. John goes on, "It's a card-matching game. My grandmother used to play it with me after supper. She said television rotted the brain and card games kept it sharp, but I think she was just afraid I'd get bored of the television and sneak off again."

"Again?"

A huff of laughter. "I had a - tendency to wander as a child. The police had to bring me back five times. I got over it eventually, don't worry."

"I wasn't going to worry. You're a grown man. You can look after yourself." His elbows have stopped twinging; Martin tries to get them under his torso and sit up without putting any more pressure on his spine. He'll be black and blue in the morning. "Right, John?"

The pause is a little longer than it should be.

"Actually," John mutters, "you should probably lock me in the house if you're going to leave all day to go to Inverness. I'm - not very hungry right now, but no reason to take chances."

If Martin winces it's hidden in the twinging of getting back to his feet. He's not going to do that and he's not going to have the argument now. There's mud all over his clothes and mud in his hair and he just hopes Daisy hid a first-aid kit somewhere he'd missed because he has to be able to walk if they don't want to keep eating minestrone soup and then starving. 

It takes them most of the afternoon to hobble home. They don't see any more bright jackets in the distance, and the cows pay them no more attention. Martin makes it under the fence on his hands and knees. As soon as they're indoors he peels off his hoodie and tries to use it to get the worst of the dirt off his face. 

It doesn't help much, and he ends up sitting on the bed wrapped in the moth-eaten blanket while John tries to get the fire going. It takes longer than it did the day before; John is muttering vicious things about how they must be called _firestarters_ because they're certainly not _fire-continuers_ and Martin laughs under his breath, which at least doesn't jostle his bruised spine any worse than getting home had. Eventually it's flickering consistently and John says he's going to make tea and vanishes into the kitchen. 

Martin can just make out the clattering noises of the kettle and pan, the creaking door as John goes outside for water. He's not tired enough to take a nap, and he doesn't want to get his muddy hair on the pillow, but the noise is hypnotic.

When John comes back he's holding a plastic dishtub, and it takes Martin several blinking seconds to conclude that the steam emerging from it means it's been pressed into service as a tea-tray. The tea-towel thrown over his shoulder is harder to explain. "John?"

"I'm going to wash your hair," John says. He kneels at the foot of the bed and starts taking things out of the tub. "Or - if you'd rather eat first the soup is on the stove, it's no -"

"Hair's fine," Martin interrupts. It still feels strange to have John being so tender with him, and taking charge of the situation seems like the least he can do. "Do I need to take my shirt off or anything?"

"Just lie down and hang your head over the edge, I think. It'll be simplest." He sounds a little more certain now he's giving instructions. Martin obeys, gathering the blanket over himself as best he can. The weight pulling his neck back makes him feel like he's choking, but he can put up with that for a little while while John pours warm water through his hair and then runs his fingers through it, making soothing noises. 

They end up pressed together all night, and Martin wakes up before dawn with a crick in his neck from keeping his head tucked into John's shoulder and feet numb with cold where they're sticking out of the blanket. He draws them back in, hissing.

The movement wakes up John, who mumbles into his hair, "Martin?"

"Sorry. Just cold."

"Let me up, I'll get the fire going again." It's only then Martin realizes he's lying mostly on top of John like an especially overweight cat, and he retreats with an apologetic mumble. John squeezes his arm. "It's fine, I'm certainly not contributing much warmth," he breathes, as if it were a joke, and retreated into the cold without a complaint. 

Martin sits up, a little, to watch him work. He can just make out the edges of a silhouette, by the halfhearted moonlight. John goes over to the clothes they left spread on kitchen chairs to dry, doing something that makes a rustling noise, then crouches down in front of the fireplace. There's a click. Oh, he must have been getting the lighter. 

It takes - a while, to find the kindling and get it stacked up against a fresh log and find the crumpled newspaper - the one they used the first night had a headline about the Libor scandal, which set an upper bound on how long this place had stood empty, and Martin wonders if John was reading these before he burned them - and by the time John crawled back into bed he's shivering. Martin pulls him close, despite his mumbled protests, and plants a calf on top his feet. 

John starts to relax, at least, half under Martin's weight again and skin starting to warm up. "Thanks," he mumbles into Martin's shoulder, and then, "Tomorrow we're getting a kerosene heater."

"We?"

He answers right away, but into the pillow. "I'm not making you walk six miles on a sprained ankle and I'm not making you eat minestrone soup for a week and a half while it heals. We'll take the car back to Inverness. You can - ziptie me to the steering wheel while you shop, or something."

"One," Martin says, "that would look incredibly suspicious, two, we probably should leave the _stolen car_ right where it is behind the bushes and under the tarp, and three, I actually think my ankle's getting better. It doesn't hurt when I move it, at least."

"Oh."

"I'm not going to make you go anywhere near anyone if you don't feel ready, John."

"Oh," John says again, and the sudden breath he took sounds wet at the edges. So does the exhale. He'd stopped shivering but now he stars again. "That's - you don't - I shouldn't make you take care of me," he says voice tiny and twisted up, like the words are a pale wriggling thing Martin found beneath an upturned rock. "You spent so long - it shouldn't be your job -"

It's not funny but Martin wants to laugh, anyway, just to let out a little of the bubbling feeling in his chest. "I _want_ to," he says. "It's my decision. Maybe we're living in a freezing house with no running water and maybe everything else in our lives has gone wrong and maybe we were both horribly doomed the moment that tremendous wanker pretending to be Elias Bouchard stuck his head into the Research department and said he wanted to talk about your job responsibilities, but dammit, I'm not going to stop being nice to you just because I don't _have_ to. Even if everything else in out lives is awful."

"What, you mean it wasn't your childhood dream to retire a two-room croft in the Scottish Highlands on the run from vampire hunters?"

He chuckles into John's hair. "Well, I would have added climbing roses over the door. And a functional telly, so we could curl up and watch Doctor Who."

"Which would also require a sofa."

"Good point. And maybe one of those heaters that look like a woodstove but actually you plug them into the wall." He considere0s. "And I wasn't going to be retired. I was going to write novels."

"That part you could still manage." John's voice is muffled by the pillow. Martin runs a hand down his back, feeling the knobby protrusions of spine beneath his still-cool skin. Add some warm pyjamas to the list, and be grateful he'd taken to keeping the Institute petty cash in his wallet. "Writing them, anyway, publishing might have complications."

"I don't know. It would take ages. Poetry's more my thing, anyway."

"Well, if you want to try anyway I'll read your drafts."

"Sure. Never would have guessed was your childhood dream to be a literature critic."

"I wasn't nearly that creative, I'm afraid. I wanted to be an astronaut."

That's genuinely surprising, and Martin huffes. "Wouldn't have taken you for a hard-sciences type."

John shrugs; Martin could feel the bony protrusion of his shoulder shifting. "I wasn't," he admits. "I was very young and had a somewhat confused idea of what astronauts did. Mostly I liked the idea of being somewhere very far away from anyone else where I didn't have to brush my hair or put on nice clothes. And got to investigate things. I suppose there was a bit of scientific urge there. The moon just seemed like a nice place to live."

The appeal from the perspective of a small child is obvious, when he thinks about it. Especially the kind of child John must have been. He hums encouragingly. 

"It would have had such a beautiful view. Just silver hills in every direction. Nothing to spoil the landscape."

"At least you got the view," Martin mumbles. 

It takes so long for John to answer that Martin begins to wonder if he'd fallen asleep, but finally he says, "Not today. Listen."

What'd he supposed to listen to? Silence, nothing but their breathing and the crackling of the fire and the distant susurrus of wind and - 

Rain on the roof. Still faint, but steady enough the individual droplets were fading into a drumroll. 

"Oh. Good thing we were going to stay in anyway."

"Quite." There's something so prim and proper about John's accent that Martin wants to laugh, but then his voice goes all wistful as he adds, "No reason to bother getting into spacesuits. We'll just catch up with our experiments."

By the next morning the rain is stopped, replaced by a fog so dense stepping outside for water is like walking back into - disorienting. Martin's ankle takes his weight without more than a mild twinge, though, so he tromps on, counting his steps and glancing over his shoulder every three at the shadowy bulk of the croft behind him. He almost trips on the pump, but manages to flail his arms and only drop the pot, not the kettle. It lands in the grass, rolling a foot before it caught on a clump of weeds. 

Lawnmower, Martin thinks, a little hysterically. Normal people with grass around their houses have lawnmowers. Maybe Daisy cut it with a scythe. Maybe she left it long for a disguise. More likely.

The tea tastes dusty and John won't put the last of their sugar in his cup, even though he didn't eat the day before. "It's fine, really, I can get lunch in Inverness," Martin told him. "You need it."

"I don't." There's something hollow and dead in his voice, like a rotten log breaking under an unsuspecting foot. "You'd better hurry. The train comes at seven-twenty-eight."

Martin gulps down his tea and wishes they had food in the house that wasn't minestrone soup and when he leaves, he locks the door. If John set the house on fire he'd just have to break a window to escape.

It feels unsettlingly natural, fading into nothingness as he steps onto the train. There must be other passengers, but Martin takes his seat by the window and listens to the wind rattling it as the train rolls on, as if it were part of some vast automated system that worked without the unfortunate necessity of human hands. The fog wraps close and soft and Martin can't tell if the fog is his loneliness or the same real weather that hid the croft from fifty paces, turned the broad expanse of loch into a pond beside the road.

The station announcements are tinny, artificial, unsettlingly familiar.

At Inverness station he wonders if it's worth the risk to turn his phone on for directions - Basira had handed them new SIM cards as if everyone kept spares in their wallet, surely those weren't being traced - and then the bright intrusion of an INFORMATION sign comes into his field if view and Martin remembers, suddenly, that he could just ask someone. Surely they're not so wanted as to appear on the news. Surely it's safe to just walk up to the nice young man playing Candy Crush on the bench and say he's from out of town. It's only that the thought of talking to a stranger leaves an ugly taste in his mouth, like burnt coffee, and Martin thinks he would be happier if he never talked to anyone but John again. 

He doesn't let the fog come back. He hurries outside instead, ignoring the way his ankle had begun to twinge, and tells himself he is a servant of the Eye and he knows what he needs to, even if it'd outside his conscious mind, and then he walked off to buy food that wasn't minestrone soup, and raincoats, a a deck of cards and some paperback books, and a duvet, and a hot-water-bottle, and some kind of keg so they didn't have to go out to the pump every time they wanted tea.

What else will they need? What should he get, if this is the last shopping trip until -

For a while. It won't do to think in more detail than that.

Martin wondered, later, if that insistent stray thought had been the Eye's prompting, if he had known it would be the last trip out into the ordinary world. But today he makes it back to the croft with no more thought than to the way his ankle hurts from each step and his arms hurt from the weight of the bags and how much he wants to collapse onto their bed and feel John's fingers working the tangles out of his hair.

When he unlocks the door a wave of warm air billowed out to meet him, and John is waiting, perched on a chair with his knees drawn up like a child and his hair hanging over his eyes, arms tight around his legs, rocking back and forth just enough to make the chair creak. His expression is blank misery for half a second before it twists into a smile. 

Martin tries clearing his throat. "Hi, honey, I'm home?"

"Well, dinner's not on the stove," John informs him. He looks like a man crawling through the desert who'd just seen a glint of sun off the distant sea. "Sit down. You were lying about the ankle, weren't you?"

"Not really? It was fine at first?" Martin can only give an apologetic shrug. He stands still in the doorway as John unfolded himself from the chair, walks over, closes his fingers on the shopping-bag handle next to Martin's. The brush of a kiss on his cheek is so gentle it barely registers.

In the end they have supper in bed, at three in the afternoon, new blanket - thick polyester with a pattern of cartoon spaceships, something for a little boy's bedroom, bought for being on sale and to make John laugh - wrapped around them as they stick out one hand at a time to the tray of formerly-frozen lasagne, one simple hot meal before they have to learn to cook. John leans his head against Martin's shoulder and the fire crackles, holding back the cold fog that still lurks outside. If it hadn't, well, it was just fog. 

He had eaten a lot of frozen meals, before. Alone on the sofa with a blanket, watching whatever happened to be on BBC Two with the sound turned low, while down the hall his mother ate in bed the meals he reheated for her, reading paperback novels one-handed. Once a month or so she would feel well enough to cook, Martin would be dispatched to the Asda for potatoes, sour cream, chives, and a cut of beef, and they would sit across the table and exchange strained remarks while the potatoes turned to mud in his mouth. Don't worry about it, Mum, he'd said once, when she pointed out the scrape on his cheek. I just fell down. Her eyebrows had pulled together and he'd wondered what she was thinking, was she going to yell at him, but all she said was, Be more careful. 

She never offered to teach him recipes, and Martin never asked. 

There are scars on John's cheek, little circular pockmarks like moon craters, and the hand twined with Martin's is thick with waxy scar tissue. The corner of his glasses digs into Martin's shoulder. 

"Daisy used to grill fish," he says suddenly. "She fished in the loch. I don't think we could. We'd run into too many people."

A chill runs down Martin's back like a spider fleeing the light, and as lightly. "Did you -"

"No, no," and John is clutching at his hand, fingers digging into the flesh against the tendons. "I went looking under the loose floorboards. I found her tackle box. And some knives." 

John, it occurs to Martin, finds the thought of his powers more horrifying than Martin does. John never weighed the sides and decided, coldly, in the light of day, that it was better to be a monster than a victim. Made the same choice, maybe, but not in cold blood. John hates the thought of hurting anyone even as he rips them to pieces.

So Martin will just have to keep him safe here, as long as he possibly can. 

"Just as well we don't know how to fish either," he says, as if it were a joke. "It's fine. I can keep going on resupply missions."

"Resupply missions?" There's a laugh lurking behind the words.

"For our little lunar colony here. Lots of pretty grey rocks, and nobody to talk to. You were right. It would be nice and quiet."

"Out here on the far side of the moon with no signal." John lets go of his hand, and slips the arm around Martin's waist, sighing as he settles in. There's a tremor in his breath, something held inside.

He has to ask. He has to ask or he'll wonder every time he hears John breathe.

Martin whispers, "Are you happy here?"

There's a little gasp, and then - "Yes," John says, muffled against Martin's sleeve, "so happy. Martin, I forgot I could be this happy."

His eyes are stinging. Martin squeezes them shut. "Me too."

_"I am so happy," Constance said at last, gasping. "Merricat, I am so happy."_

_"I told you that you would like it on the moon."_ \- Shirley Jackson, 'We Have Always Lived In The Castle'

**Author's Note:**

> I've been working on this fic far too long; I promised myself I'd publish it before the flood of Season 5 fics ... Inspired by the fact that even if Martin's name was meant as a reference to writer Algernon Blackwood, it seemed too significant to be coincidental that he shared initials with Mary Katherine Blackwood, lover of deathcap mushrooms.


End file.
